Running
by Thethuthinnang
Summary: BtVS.LotR. Buffy-centered. What she does. 3rd in The Girl.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

There are too many.

The morning air is cold. We sit still in the grass.

She stands boldly in front of us. The blunt noises of her own language tumble from her tongue. She speaks loudly, angrily, and desperately. The light catches in her hair, ignites in her eyes. The cloak I lent her is in pieces, torn to shreds. The grass was damp when we lay against it, and too much is exposed by clinging fabric.

I think I am the only one who sees the knife in her hand. The orcs do not pay it any mind; they are too engrossed with what they have before them.

One of them jabs at her with its spear. She trips forward, but rounds on the spear-bearer, shouting various, incomprehensible things that must be insults by the ugly sounds of them. The orcs howl and laugh and come closer to her.

We remain. My maids and friends are afraid, though we try to face our fates with stoic silence. I saw our two guards cut down, swords still sheathed. How could it be? How could orcs come so close without our knowing? I cannot explain it, but they have, and we are caught unawares.

I shall suffer as my mother suffered, and more.

Strangely, I am not afraid. I feel dull, in a stupor, as if I am not awake, but I am not frightened. All I can think is that I regret being unable to see Estel again before I am sundered from him forever.

She is still speaking, and she has gotten farther away from us. They have cut her, here and there, and her blood seems to have inflamed them. They are gathering around her now, following her as she stumbles, each eager to inflict its own wound.

Unhappy girl, to have lost her home only to die here, like this. The orcs are maddened by her, behaving as if intoxicated, shoving each other aside in trying to get to her. There - one has just killed the one at its right for impeding the way.

A memory rises in my mind, unbidden, unwilling. I see my brothers, speaking together in a part of the house at an hour of the day where and when they thought they would be unobserved. I watched them, by happenstance more than by wont, and I knew what they were arguing. They hardly seemed like brothers then, standing face-to-face, glaring as if each hated the other, talking in low, hard voices.

She has changed them, broken them apart. But I cannot blame her, for she did not want such a thing, and I know she regrets ever coming to Imladris. My brothers pull and pull at her, each as fierce in his love as the other, and she cries out with pain and fear in her sleep.

Would that there were two of her, as there are two of them. But there is only one, her alone, and perhaps that is fitting, for how could any place ever withstand two such creatures?

We are the Eldar, the Firstborn, and she drives us to madness. I see the desire fill their eyes at the sight of her, the longing as if she were the sea itself. What is it in her that we recognize, that we want so urgently?

I see more than is acknowledged. I am, perhaps, the only one who knows that the marchwarden, who came to us on behalf of my grandmother, now stays only for those few moments in the morning when he might see her walking in the garden. That Rumil is neither ill nor ill-mannered, but only sick with love, so much so that his brothers worry for him. That a single, flashing glance from her eyes would bring a golden lord to his knees.

That my father, who faced losing a daughter and now faces losing his sons, is in anguish.

There is a piercing shriek, a glint of metal, and then we see her.

She stands in the middle of a mob. The knife in her hand is black with blood, her clothes hanging by threads. Terrible wounds bleed into her free hand. Her eyes, her fatal eyes, lock with mine.

_Run, _she screams, and the word brings me to my feet. _Run!_

We are standing. I see suddenly that the orcs are indeed a distance from us now, their backs turned, not one left to guard us. They have forgotten their other prisoners, they are so hungry for her.

They close on her again, and someone pulls at my hand. "My lady, we must, I beg you, we must," and then I am pulled away, pulled into the trees, and we are running, running away from the screams and the blood and the girl who has bought us our lives with her own.

We run.

My thoughts run with me. What have I done? I have abandoned her to torture and worse than death for my own safety. I have proven coward. I...I have left her to suffer as my mother suffered.

This makes me slow, near to stopping, but their hands pull at me and I am forced to keep up.

There is no pursuit, though we are constantly looking back for it. She has drawn them well and truly. Does she live? Does she still struggle, though surely by now she has been dragged down? Perhaps there is still hope; if we were to find help, if we were only to reach my father in time. I know, at the least, my brothers would...

My brothers.

Oh, Nienna, have pity. Do not let her die. Do not, do not. I plead you, for love of my brothers, for their sakes, I beseech you, do not let her die.

I do not know how long we run before they find us. They come like shadows, one cloaked, blade-bared figure after the other, and the two at the fore are Elladan and Elrohir. When they see us, their faces are filled with sweet relief, a heartbeat before they realize that we are missing several of our number.

"They have her," I gasp, before anyone else may speak. "The orcs, they have her, she led them away..."

I cannot bear to look at them, but neither can I bear to look away. I see the terror born in their eyes, the unspeakable dread that makes them slip past me, vanishing into the wood. I cannot bear to think of what they will find.

But we are alike, my brothers and I, and, despite those who would keep me back, I turn and follow.


	2. Chapter 2

We came upon the bodies at midday.

They lay in broken shapes beneath the trees, black and unnatural. Orcs, perhaps fifty, a small war band. We went forward slowly, with caution, arrows nocked, and found that they were all dead. With them were the bodies of two Elves, dressed in the insignia of Lord Elrond's household, their swords sheathed. They were obviously taken by surprise. It is unclear how.

The grass was slick with blood, mangled so that we could get nothing from it but what we could already see. But the wounds inflicted upon the orcs spoke of more: a honed edge, small, whetted so sharp that I could almost hear it singing in flight as I looked on its work; unerring intent, each orc laid low with a single, killing stroke; and a grace of violence in the places and positions the bodies fell, so close together in time and space that the wielder of the blade would have had to have been killing them one after another, like beats of the heart, in close combat.

"The Peredhil?" someone whispered, and we looked at each other wonderingly. It fit - after many days of travel, we were very close to the valley where the Half-Elven and his children dwelt. I had heard tales of the battle prowess of the sons of Elrond, but this was beyond mere skill. If this was their work, then the tales I had heard had not done them justice.

But I doubted it, for one small, strange fact: from the way the orcs had stood, had died, had fallen, from the injuries done and the similarities in the doing of them, the logical conclusion was that this was the labor of one man, and one man only. But what man, Eldar or Edain, could fight like this?

I saw that my companions had seen this as well as I, and perhaps we would have spoken of it, had we not heard it then. A cry, like a wolf's, from the west, where the bodies led.

We followed it.

The corpses of orcs grew fewer and fewer, and at the same time larger, crueler in aspect, until I grew certain that these were the chieftains of the war band. The distance between each body became farther and farther, as if they had been running after someone who led them a merry chase, spreading them out in order to cut them down one at a time. Their wounds, as we went, grew coarser, the timing off by seconds, as if the wielder of the blade had become hurried, rushing his strikes. And then we began to see blood, bright red blood that spotted the black slime of the orcs. There was more of it as we went, so much that we were aghast that anyone could bleed so much and still stand much less fight, but so tainted with orcish blood had it become that we could not tell its origin.

We discovered the knife still stuck in the throat of the last orc, twitching in its death rattle, which had died face down choking on its own still-warm blood. I pulled it free in a black flood, found that it was nothing more than an ordinary hunting knife, though of Elven make. The blade was small, with a honed edge, and I could almost hear it sing.

"It cannot be," I heard whispered, and I looked up.

I saw her.


	3. Chapter 3

I borrowed a sword. I have been forced to walk in the middle of the company, having refused to turn back with the others. My brothers are too distracted to command me home, the others willing to follow their lead. Thus I included myself, and now go forward with a bare blade.

In our flight, my friends and I had gotten farther than I thought, and it is some time before we reach the place where the Orcs came upon us. I had not spared myself, and we traveled quickly, though not at the run they would have gained had I not been present. The quiet that I hear, the agony in my brothers' faces, makes me choke on my guilt.

We find first the guards who had come with us. They are inspected, pronounced dead, and two of our number are left behind to keep watch. We press on.

At the place where I last saw her, we discover the first corpses and the first signs of battle.

"There was no one else," I tell them. "When we fled, she was alone."

"Someone has been here." Haldir is on a knee, examining the ground. "Not Orcs."

Hope brightens into being in my brothers' eyes. They want to hurry on, and perhaps I am the only one who sees the expression on Haldir's face. Perhaps I am not the only one who knows that something is very wrong.

We follow a spoor of death and blood. Hope grows as we go, for there is clear sign of battle. Haldir, however, becomes more and more uneasy, as if he is seeing something we do not or do not choose to see, and this begins to communicate itself to Rumil and the others, but not to my brothers. I can see that all Elrohir and Elladan can think of now is finding her alive and safe.

I, too, can think of nothing else. I regret every ungenerous thought I ever had about her. I wish I had not left her. I think again of her eyes when they met mine, of her look when she told us to run. For she is also a woman, and an Edain, and it was she who stood up while I, a daughter of the Eldar, ran for her life. We both were helpless, we both faced the same torture and excruciation, and it was I who broke and she who withstood.

Is that what they see, is that what we all see when we look at her, that speaks to us, that intoxicates us?

I think of my mother, who survived but never was the same.

Never again. Never again shall I be weak in the face of danger. I beg you, whatever graces watch over us, I beg you to let us find her. Let her survive.

Let her not be beyond healing.

Ahead, Elrohir and Elladan move quickly, as attuned to each other as ever. I swear, I swear that whomever she chooses, I shall be happy for her, I won't blame her for anything, whether it is Elrohir or Elladan, or even Haldir or Rumil or anyone else in Arda, I swear I shall not mind. Only let her be alive, let us find her in time.

And then we stop. I am confused, but bows are drawn and I grip my sword. Someone is coming.

From ahead, a shape appears from the shadows of the wood, followed by others. We lower our weapons, for these are not Orcs - these are Elves.

They stop, lowering their bows as well, and then I realize who they are. They are Wood-elves. I recognize their dress and the style of their bows. These are Elves of the Greenwood.

And in the back I see him, the cloaked figure walking slowly for the sake of the bundle he carries.

I cannot think how they came to be here, and I cannot care. Clearly they must have come upon the Orcs, perhaps even had been hunting them. If they had only come a little while sooner! But it does not matter, for she is safe, they have her, and I could weep. My legs will not hold me and I sink to the ground, hardly aware of the solicitous hand at my arm.

I see my feelings mirrored a thousandfold in my brothers. The way they stand, the way their shoulders move, the way their breath catches. They are speechless with relief. I see the worry ease from Haldir's face, even as he places a hand on Rumil's shoulder to steady him.

The Elf holding her comes closer, to the front, and beneath his hood I recognize him. He is Legolas, son of Thranduil, and I can see the spill of her golden hair over his arm.

"We must take her to your father," he says. He does not bother with introductions or greetings. "She is badly wounded, and I do not know how much longer she can bear."

Elrohir puts his bow on his back and goes forward to take her. Legolas frowns, and takes a single step back.

My brothers still, expressions changing. A tremor of apprehension makes me shake.

Legolas looks not at my brothers, but down at her, and I do not think I am the only one who sees his fingers lightly brush her cheek.

Disaster.


End file.
